


Arthur's justice

by billy_bonka



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Baby Arthur, Conditioning, child! Arthur, child! morgana, crimes against magic, i hate uther, idk man, uther's a horrible father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28451952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billy_bonka/pseuds/billy_bonka
Summary: The screams of the living and dying are not easy to forget.
Kudos: 10





	Arthur's justice

Arthur was five and frightened when his father -- his resolute father -- forced his chin toward the citadel square and had him watch as a witch burned. He watched the fire lick at the feet of a crying, begging woman. Right before his wide eyes, the flames grew impatient, faster, it consumed… burned… until there was nothing.

To Arthur, it was over in the blink of an eye. Only ashes remained.

The young prince listened to the screams of the living and dying, blurring into each other into a cacophonic chaos.

He remembered the feeling of his eyes watering frantically, and the loud cowardly thumps of his heart, rivalled in volume only by the shouts of the crowd. Was this the witch’s final revenge? Had she turned their fire into her smoke? The smog seemed to travel upward to suffocate him too, the small prince standing high above and watching. Did she spell her ashes to weigh down his tongue? Had she bewitched her death to haunt?

She’d used a pain-numbing spell to help her daughter give birth.

The screams of the living and dying are not easy to forget.

_Innocence_ \-- lies, as his father had taught him with soft pity, with a firm and not unkind hand on his shoulder. He locked the word up in his mind, never to touch the lips of a sorcerer craftily begging for their life.

_Anger_ \-- he had learnt to hold on to theirs, to forge on, and have the strength of his father remain in him. A prince had to hold his head up proud.

_Sadness, Grief_ \-- the imitations of human feelings from monsters, long since twisted by the sultry whispers of magic.

From the first witch-burning that he was forced to watch, Arthur had learnt these important lessons. He had learnt of the otherworldly evils of the sorcerer, rivalled only by the foolish evil of willful men who believed otherwise. The king had taught him the necessity of hating magic -- a birthright which he had to accept.

Arthur had let that be the beginning of the erosion of his humanity when it came to those who practiced magic. _Pity_ was to be suppressed, looked down upon within himself, as a deficiency. His father had burnt twenty a day, he had heard.

Morgana wasn’t as strong as he was. She fought for those who had done nothing immoral, she fought with his father about justice, and she fought Arthur when he tried to help her see it. She was too unfortunately passionate.

( _Magic is a_ crime _, Morgana. It’s evil._ )

( _Evil is taking the lives of those who have done nothing wrong, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise just because Uther says so._ )

At the age of eight, at his fifth burning (he stopped keeping count after this), he convinced himself with the rancid taste of singed flesh on his tongue that there was a dark, swirling form behind the man on the pyre. The floating ashes tugged at him.

From then, he saw evil on every sorcerer's shoulder.

Morgana wasn’t as enthusiastic about his findings as he was. _It has to be a sign of justice, Morgana! Only those who are strong enough to understand can see it!_ She scoffed. He stormed out of the room.

He was justice, as his father was.

Another four years later, the plump old woman who had used a spell to cushion her granddaughter’s fall off a tall tree looked alarmingly like the first witch he saw burn. But this time, through her pleadings and tears, he saw her for what she really was. He saw the dark form swirling about her trembling shoulders, mocking him. He stood resolute as his father waved a powerful hand and she was taken to the dungeons beneath.

A week later, as she burned, Arthur’s eyes watered only from the ashes that floated up, the specks of Magic’s final defiance against their justice. Or so he would only let himself feel. To the side, Morgana had her eyes screwed shut, and her hands balled into little fists by her side.

They watched as her granddaughter tried to lunge into the flames, and how she was restrained by her mother. The guards of Camelot hovered over the small pair, daring them to get close to the witch.

Arthur inhaled stiffly at the sight.

The mother in question was let off with a mere week of jail time, after the old woman had begged for her mercy. She claimed her daughter had had no idea she practiced magic. It was still ringing in his ears, the way the old woman screamed at the king for mercy, as she shed tears for justice.

Throughout the trial, the witch’s daughter had been mute. Her daughter’s head hung heavy the whole time, even as she was escorted to the dungeons below. 

Uther’s dulled eyes narrowed at this, as he did in disgust whenever faced with a magic-user, and Arthur knew she was gone too. He tried to argue for her sake, but the king was cautious and the young prince shrunk back against the proud crown.

Surveying the scene below, Arthur pursed his lips half in pity as he took in the familiar sight of kin crying over sorcerers, seeing them for the loved ones they’d lost and not the heinous beings they’d become, tempted by magic’s evils. He shut his eyes against the scene of the mother holding her child and sinking to the floor, refusing to catalogue in his mind the image of her bony shoulders shaking. The old woman was gone.

Morgana turned around and fled at this and Uther let her go, his eyes instead trained closely on the crying mother-daughter pair left behind. “Guards. Fetch them.”

Arthur tightened his grip on the railing before him against the brisk command. Magic or not, it was best for Camelot to be cautious.

_But the screams of the living and dying are not easy to forget._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed my wee drabble there, not entirely satisfied with my writing style but found it passable so here it is.
> 
> Feel free to give feedback, and thank you for reading!


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